


Things Never Said, Always Regretted

by TinyMonsters



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, If I attempted to write actual slash I'd be laughed out of the fandom, Major character death - Freeform, Unrequited, Was sad when I wrote this, read it anyways even if there's no sex, sort of slash but no actual slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-19 05:18:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7346647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyMonsters/pseuds/TinyMonsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's biggest regret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Never Said, Always Regretted

**Author's Note:**

> K2Dangergirl was super awesome, and helped beta. Thanks! (go read her stuff too!)  
> https://archiveofourown.org/users/K2Dangergirl/pseuds/K2Dangergirl

Sherlock had been in love once, he thinks. He’s not sure, but if he had been in love with anyone, it was with John. He had never told any of his friends, least of all, John. Everyone had expected that Sherlock didn’t go in for that sort of thing. But now it's the biggest regret of his life that he'd never said anything.

Not sharing hopes and dreams with any of his friends, when he could have. Now it’s too late for any of that. For a long time he had thought that he didn’t have any friends, at least until John Watson told him the day he asked Sherlock to be his best man, that he was his best friend. Up to that point in his life, he'd never realized anyone cared enough to consider him their best friend. Then, after he had taken care of Magnussen, and the way the others started offering help with the drugs thing, he’d started looking at the other people in his life at that point, and realized that maybe, just maybe, that he did have friends. True friends. 

People who supported him for who he was, without question. Sure, he still had been kind of a dickhead to them sometimes (most of the time), but he realized that they truly cared. Even if he had been uncomfortable with the feeling, they were still his friends. He just had never told them how he felt about them. Mostly because he hadn’t thought that they’d believe him. He wishes that he had told them now, but it was too late. 

It’s been a long time since he had last seen most of his friends, and he missed his best friend the most of all. John had left to do the shopping a few weeks ago, and hadn’t come home. Sherlock had thought that John would always be here, with him. If Mrs Hudson had been the backbone of Baker Street, John was his. John made sure that he ate…occasionally. Made sure that there was tea in the flat, and milk to go with it. He was always there when Sherlock made a miscalculation, and ended up injured because there was always something. 

And now, without John, he felt small, like he could never stand up straight again. Without John, he felt like he was falling, again. Except that this time it wasn’t a magic trick. It was an uncontrolled, terrifying fall that felt like it was never going to end. He wished that he would hurry up and land, so he could get over with it quicker. 

But John would never want him to do that…again.

Mrs Hudson was gone, Gavin, Gilbert? Greg...had been dead for a few years now. Molly had gotten married, and had moved away. He would get emails, and the occasional Facebook message from her, telling him about interesting causes of death that she came across in her job, he missed visiting the mortuary to go see her (with John always accompanying him). Mycroft was still alive, still in his minor government position. (He must be one of the undead, or had used his connections at Baskerville for his own personal use.).

Yes, he missed all of his friends, but John was the one that he missed the most, and would give anything to see him again.

John had returned to Baker Street after Mary. They’d never talked about Mary, and if she was ever brought up in conversation by someone other than the two of them, they would both make some excuse to change the subject. Sherlock had assumed that John was still in love with her, even after everything that had happened. So Sherlock had never told John how he felt about him, had never told him the real reason he’d left John that day at St Bart’s. He would have taken John if he could have, but the threat at the time from Moriarty’s network had been too big, and Sherlock loved John too much to have taken the chance, and risked his life, even if John had excelled at all the dangerous parts of their work, and was saving Sherlock’s life more often than Sherlock was saving his. 

Sherlock had loved John Watson too much to put his life at risk by taking him to Serbia. He never wanted John to go through what he had gone through himself during his Hiatus. He had attempted suicide at the airfield that day so that John would not follow him back to Serbia. Because as soon as John would receive word that something had happened to Sherlock, John would have been there, and Mycroft was right, he wouldn’t have come back from the mission. He had desperately not wanted to die alone, so far away from John, and even more desperately, he didn't want John to die in a futile attempt to save him from the last remaining Serbian branch of Moriarty's Network. 

As much as Sherlock hadn’t wanted to admit it, he was a bit grateful to Moriarty for saving the both of them that day when his Network had hacked England’s television transmissions.

That hack had given Sherlock an extra 26 years with John. He still wished that he could have had longer, but he had taken what he could have of John just being there with him. Chinese dinners after the successful conclusion of a difficult case, tea on the weekends in the flat while Sherlock worked on experiments, and John reading the newspapers, and writing up cases in the blog. 

But then, a few weeks ago John had gone to the shops to pick up the essentials, tea, milk, toilet paper, biscuits, and some chemicals that Sherlock said were necessary for his latest experiment. Nothing harmful, just several brands of some bleach, ammonia, and vinegar. (Sherlock had wanted to see which brands cleaned blood up the fastest, and most efficiently). 

Sherlock had hidden the doorbell in the refrigerator again that morning. It was annoying. (He really missed Mrs Hudson answering the door for them).

The insistent knocking on the door later that afternoon was just as annoying as the doorbell was. Sherlock tried to ignore it for awhile, but he could only take the interruption for so long. He went to answer the door, and that’s when his world ended. It was the police. They weren’t there to ask him for help at NSY, and since Molly no longer worked at the mortuary, he hadn’t expected the request for him to accompany them there to make an identification. 

Sherlock had sent a text to John, to ask him to meet him there. John hadn’t answered. 

So he hadn’t expected DCI Donovan to meet him there instead. He also had not expected to see that John was already there. 

oh…John.

Donovan explained that John had been found in the park, near a bench in his favourite part. He’d apparently never made it to the shops. The coroner estimated that he’d been dead for a few hours, and his theory was that John had possibly had a heart attack, or a stroke. 

Sherlock didn’t understand, John had said that morning that he was going to make him that thing with the peas, and tea. How could he be dead?

He had thanked Donovan, and identified John. He stood there for a long time, staring at his friend. Not trying to deduce how John died. He just stared. Eventually Mycroft had come in, using his umbrella almost like a cane to walk, and gently collected his brother to take him home to Baker Street. Sherlock didn’t say anything, for once he didn’t insult his brother, and had just followed him out of the building to the car, back to Baker Street.


End file.
